Non-Western scholars initially welcomed Orientalist scholarship and used it readily

Evidence

In time, scholars in the “Orient” became increasing respectful and sometimes even appreciative. Scholars from Islamic countries and possibly also from others began to attend some of the congresses of orientalists. At the congress held in Stockholm, for example, in 1889 there were a number from Middle Eastern countries and two of them, one Turk and one Egyptian, wrote long accounts of their attendance at these gatherings which are still worth reading. Appreciation was shown by their willingness to utilize orientalist scholarship—books, dictionaries, editions of texts and the like, which they found of great value, and more tangibly through exchanges of visits, through the sending of students and even, increasingly, through the translation of the writings of orientalists into Arabic and other Middle Eastern languages. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 2071

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the tidy Said narrative; the studied peoples’ early response was appreciation, not resistance. — connects to: Orientalist scholarship was overwhelmingly dominated by Western scholars into the 1920s